Monday, 17 April 2017

Space travel and rocket science

Changed 04-05-2025, 05-05-2025
Retitled 2025 was; Savages
  The first picture of the dark side of the moon was taken in 1959


Mythology surrounds some of the history because the science reporting was poor at the time.

A few years ago was the anniversary of Luna 9 landing on the moon successfully in 1965.  Apparently, the Daily Mail reported the story and printed pictures from the moon's surface intercepted by Jodrell Bank before Russia confirmed the success.  The first pictures of the dark side of the moon had been sent back to Earth by Luna 3 in 1959.  And an earlier Luna 2 crashed to the moon.

I was wondering what NASA was doing at the same time, and I looked up the infamous Papermate pen that was used in space by NASA.  Papermate launched and advertised its new pen that could write upside-down in space in 1965.  Meanwhile, cosmonauts were using pencils (sensibly), was the put- down.  The risk with pencils is that pieces of lead (carbon) breaking off won't fall harmlessly, but will float and into something and could do harm. 

Of the highest world military spenders, Britain and the United States spend the highest on military, war and hate by proportion of land area than any other country this is profitable for a few but it is likely that the majority of people look the other way but think a few crumbs from the business of spreading hate and selling weapons is still a lot of crumbs for us. 

CARTOON of the military eating all the food whilst the other tables starve.
The Soviet Union was refused entry to NATO and it embarked on an almost crippling programme of military spending and developed an Intercontinental Ballistic missile during the 1950s.  This was counter to the USA's claimed superiority in being able to destroy the Soviet Union with its vast force of B-52 bombers.  The Soviet Rocket took a long time to fuel up and prepare, meanwhile, a nuclear war could be over by that time, but the rocket continued to be used for 60 years and, by varying the number of stages, was used in the space programme.

I am disappointed that so few signed the petition below and the parliamentary one is now closed but 38 degrees is still running.  My wording is very similar to what Jeremy Corbyn said on behalf of the Labour Party.  I think it is evidence that people still support the Bush/Blair wars and that parliament was correct to vote for war even if it was mostly Conservative MPs who voted for such a war. 

People wanted a scapegoat for the actions they also wanted.

The Soviet pencil and the multi-million dollar pen anecdote are well known, and the problem of military spending on such a vast scale is mostly turned into no functional or useless output.  Atoms for Peace was coined by General D. Eisenhower to produce nuclear warheads, not to produce electricity.  Britain’s first nuclear power station, Calder Hall, was switched on to the grid by the Queen, but it never produced electricity.  It is debatable if nuclear warheads are fitted and armed in reality, the number of near misses and accidents and cock-ups happening should have, by now, not led to nuclear contamination or nuclear detonation.


Film and TV produced very good space fiction at this time
 - The Forbidden Planet, where a machine can produce matter from vast amounts of energy, creating the nightmares deep in the mind of the user.

- Dr Who's fourth story, Edge of Destruction, shows us the machine is telepathic and also can deliver virtual electric shocks, a bump on the head turns out to be a virtual injury, and a melted clock face with hands melted to warn of only several minutes to destruction.  The only way humans may get anywhere else in space will be by some technology that we can barely imagine, even in fiction, how it could be done.

If stirring conflict and hate were to stop being funded, then no doubt space and nuclear power research that spin in technology for an otherwise inefficient military-industrial complex would have to find other funding or cease.  The USA could have the National Health Service that people have always wanted instead.


The best film of the 20th Century - I agree, and one of the very few truly Science Fiction.  Perhaps leaving the forests, jungles and vegetable eating to aggression and eating meat was a bad turn for humans?


Postscript 2025


A Soviet closed cycle rocket was used in the final space stage of bigger rockets in the 1960s although the design was shelved it was brought out of storage and completed after the fall of the Soviet Union by American money and some engineering using the Russian rocket engineers and design methods and eventually launched in 2014.

This rocket is 25% more efficient that any other rocket because the waste from the fuel pumps are put in to the rocket chamber, a further step the Russian metals work at higher temperatures, and another refinement is that the pump runs oxygen rich so it supply's the rocket chamber oxygen comes from the pumps waste. 

The project management was Soviet passing the design to the contractor such as a Soviet jet engine maker for the rocket metals and chamber.  Using US engine testing equipment to save the cost of rocket launches and do better tests.  Lockheed Martin spokesman complemented the efficient and different way the Soviet/Russian Federation design had been managed.  And that they had necessarily took bigger gambles.

The Russian Federation was very open this is one example, many old nuclear bombs have been burnt in US power stations and the closed cycle rocket was launched in 2014 successfully and is used and further refined now.  Sadly we then turned on The Russian Federation placing nuclear missiles on the ground of former Soviet States. 
 
 

Carl Sagan's TV series COSMOS is very worth watching.  Despite being created 40 years ago he explains science, history, space and human understanding of those clearly using well understood then and now science.  Most of the series are on YouTube.

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